It only adds to the interest of this phenomenon when we turn to our
learned books on birds for an explanation of the origin of migration, the
whence and whither of the long journeys by day and night, and find--no
certain answer! This is one of the greatest of the many mysteries of the
natural world, of which little is known, although much is guessed, and the
bright September nights may reveal to us--we know not what undiscovered
facts.

I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive; what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God sends his hail
Of blinding fire-balls, sleet or driving snow,
In sometime, his good time, I shall arrive;
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
Robert Browning.

GHOSTS OF THE EARTH

We may know the name of every tree near our home; we may recognise each
blossom in the field, every weed by the wayside; yet we should be
astonished to be told that there are hundreds of plants--many of them of
exquisite beauty--which we have overlooked in very sight of our doorstep.
What of the green film which is drawn over every moist tree-trunk or
shaded wall, or of the emerald film which coats the water of the pond's
edge? Or the gray lichens painting the rocks and logs, toning down the
shingles; the toadstools which, like pale vegetable ghosts, spring up in a
night from the turf; or the sombre puff balls which seem dead from their
birth?

The moulds which cover bread and cheese with a delicate tracery of
filaments and raise on high their tiny balls of spores are as worthy to be
called a plant growth as are the great oaks which shade our houses. The
rusts and mildews and blights which destroy our fruit all have their
beauty of growth and fruition when we examine them through a lens, and the
yeast by which flour and water is made to rise into the porous, spongy
dough is just as truly a plant as is the geranium blossoming at the
kitchen window.

If we wonder at the fierce struggle for existence which allows only a few
out of the many seeds of a maple or thistle to germinate and grow up, how
can we realise the obstacles with which these lowly plants have to
contend? A weed in the garden may produce from one to ten thousand seeds,
and one of our rarest ferns scatters in a single season over fifty
millions spores; while from the larger puff-balls come clo